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Sandra Brito was recently driven to a difficult
decision - after almost 14 years as a US foreign service officer under
three presidents: she retired rather than serve further under the Bush
administration. We discuss her experience in multiple assignments
within the State
Department including intelligence analyst and briefer and her
experience of the Bush regime as it fixed the intelligence around the
policy.

Oh! what a
tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive!

Often
attributed to Shakespeare,
but actually by Sir
Walter Scott, author of Ivanhoe & Rob Roy, this
couplet perfectly summarizes the Bush regime and the dilemma in which
he has placed the United States - including his now declared intent to
saddle any subsequent president, the American people, and most
tragically, Iraq, with an"enduring commitment" to endless war. RFS

As a state department employee with a TS/SCI - Top
Secret/Specially Compartmented Information - clearance, Sandra
Brito was admitted to the Joint Military Intellligence College,
now known as the National
Defence Intellligence College where she received her Master's
Degree in strategic intelligence as well as a certificate in Middle
East Studies.

We discuss the structure and function of the State
Department's INR, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research and how she,
as an INR analyst, was privy to TS/SCI information which her
agency, INR, found to be insufficient and dubious as proof of
Iraq's alleged WMD program and accused association with Al-Qaeda.
Among 17 intelligence agencies, INR provided the only dissenting
opinion to the October 2002 NIE / National Intelligence Estimate which
falsely claimed an Iraqi threat of WMDs. This NIE formed the
basis of the Bush regime's justification to attack Iraq.

Aside from her own direct experience as INR analyst, her
interactions with other intelligence agencies and experienced and
respected members of the intelligence community revealed the widespread
and serious misgivings about the inappropriate pressures from the Bush
regime to cherry pick and distort intelligence such that - as later
confirmed in the Downing
Street Minutes - "the intelligence and
facts were being fixed around the policy."

The exploitation of 911 by the Bush administration was not
only a public relations assault on the American psyche to instill fear
(see Naomi Klein's article and short
video - The Shock Doctrine), but an unprecedented ripping
of the curtain between the Oval Office and the intelligence
community.

At every level and across multiple agencies, the Bush regime
- and most infamously, Dick Cheney - pressured the
intelligence community to find evidence supporting their premeditated
rush to war against Iraq. When that evidence was not forthcoming,
the findings of the agencies were cherry picked and manipulated to
augment what thin gruel there was and finally, false evidence - such as
the forged documents claiming Sadaam's purchase of yellow cake from
Niger - was created: a professional analyst's worst nightmare
scenario. But even these manipulations were not enough. Donald
Rumsfeld established the Office of Special Plans as a custom
intelligence agency within the Defense Department with the singular
mission to further pursue and create false findings. A litany of
Cheney's involvement in thes lies and distortions are detailed in HR 333 -
Dennis Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment.

Sandra Brito views the function of intelligence is to
speak truth to power. Ray McGovern, retired CIA
analyst, presidential intelligence briefer, and member of VIPS / Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
(the "CIA in exile") is among many that concur in this view. What
we have now is power demanding lies from intelligence.
The result is a disaster for the world, for Iraq, the Middle East, for
America, and for the intelligence agencies themselves as they are
forced to abandon their role of providing the unvarnished truth to
enable informed decision making and are now instead participants in a
criminal war of aggression that is eroding United States security and
marching the country in lockstep down the path to a police state.

Click
here forUS State Dept Bureau of Intelligence and Research - only
US intelligence agency to dissent from the 2002 NIE
Click here
forUnited States Intelligence Community member agencies Click here forNIE 2002 / Nationl Intelligence Estimate - uh, redacted.
Click here
for The Downing Street Memo
Here's the
smoking gun - "...the intelligence and facts
were being fixed around the policy." Click here
for Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article on Rumsfeld's "Office
of Special Plans"
Click here
for Iraq & WMDs at the National Security Archive
at George Washington University - an award winning library of
declassified documents obtained by FOIA / Freedom of Information
Act Click here for PBS/Frontline video on
John O'Neill Senior FBI agent that warned about 911... and was ignored Click here
for The Cato Institute on Total Information Awareness